Maybe it was the time of year. Maybe it was because my copy of the book was in an advanced stage of acidification with the pages cracking and the glue failing so I feared taking this book with me on the subway (images of high school moments when a dropped binder in a busy hallway could destroy a years worth of work in about three seconds). Maybe I read this too slowly, taking too many days off in between each sitting. Maybe it was the stress and anxiety of working retail, yet again, for another holiday season. Maybe it was that I had enough doom and gloom running through my head for the first half of this book, and then maybe it was because everything turned out so fucking good that it all almost felt like a Christmas miracle that I was too cheered to feel the last section of this book in a properly pessimistic tone (no, there might not be a Santa Claus, but fortunately the world isn't always a ironic and pessimistic narrative either). It's probably a mixture of all the above, but I just didn't get into this book.I'm trying to write this and my goodreads buddy MFSO is railing about the 'populist' attacks against 'serious' capital el Literature that flare up pretty often in some corners of the goodreads universe. I keep checking the email updates to see what he has written and throw in my own asinine comments. I bring this up, because the sector of the book world that usually launches these attacks is certain sci-fi fans. This is a sci-fi book, I guess. It won the Hugo award and it goes in the sci-fi section of Barnes and Noble. That's good enough for me to think of it as sci-fi (and there are space-ships, so sci-fi it is). A professor I had in college, in a sci-fi literature class, used to go on and on about how great sci-fi was because it could deal with Big Important Issues in ways that regular novels couldn't. (cough, bullshit, cough). I'm sorry, I didn't mean that verbal / typed twitch. I mean, correct Professor. Sci-fi can deal with important issues and it has the benefit of being able to create a world without the limitations of strict realism to explore those issues. But, and I'm taking this from the stellar examples my professor put in the reading list of the class, those issues are usually dealt with in an allegorical manner that has a bit of sugar coating and masked in escapist literary tropes. Not that there is anything wrong with this, these conditions are probably all necessary in making a fine-good samizdat . Personally, the political messages of Moving Mars or that book about the women who live in a walled in city were as effective to me as all that free-trade / trade war nonsense that George Lucas infected his prequels with. To me, these books (and movies) might have had an important message but the message only felt like it would be revelatory to someone who had never thought about an issue before. They felt like the literary equivalent of a college Freshman who hears one lecture about some injustice in the world and instantly becomes an annoying radicalized twit out to change the world through pedantic lecturing. Why am I going on about this anyway? I'm not exactly sure. To sum up a whole paragraph filled with half-baked ideas that are sure to alienate more than a few of my goodreads friends (sorry!), I just don't really 'get' most sci-fi / fantasy, I don't necessarily find it that enjoyable to read, and when it gets political it always feels like it's trying too hard for the message being expressed (yes, I'm sure I'm wrong here). This book is about the world after nuclear war puts an end to civilization as we know it (or knew it in the 1950's / 60's). After the bombs fall some monks take it upon themselves to save the remains of knowledge from the dead civilization. Against angry hordes of anti-intellectual survivors hellbent on destroying all of those responsible for creating the bombs that wrecked the world, the monks save texts that they don't know the meaning of but safeguard them for the future. As the book goes on so does time, and from the post-apocolyptic world eventually rises up a new world that (re)discovers the science of our society and eventually once again nuclear missiles are poised to wipe out the entire world (again). There are the fairly usual questions about the nature of knowledge and what is the role of science in the world. Should science continue on doing what it does even if it means that the theoretical breakthroughs in one field also mean that newer and dangerous weapons can be created in another? Should Einstein have just shot himself in the fucking face when he was ten years old? Are we by nature just evil fucking creatures, original sin and all. Are we just inevitably going to destroy ourselves again and again and again? Aren't these the kind of things I like thinking about? Yeah, sometimes. Ok, yes, I like dwelling on the awfulness of humanity. And yes, I like the Nietzschean eternal reoccurrence thing being hinted on, and yes I think that humanity in the not-so long run is fucked, but not because we are all evil motherfuckers but because there are a few evil motherfuckers and you just need a couple at the right time trying win the whose got the biggest evilest dick contest to fuck up everything for everyone else. So, yes these are topics I do like to think about and which I like to pop up in my books, but in this book it didn't offer me anything to really sink my teeth into. Maybe it's the era it was written in, but it felt too much like a slightly more intellectual version of the scare movies of the 1950's, sort of a duck-and-cover / Reefer Madness with a CND message. Not that I hated the book, which I think might be the feeling I'm giving here. I didn't hate it. I liked it but it didn't do that much for me. I wanted more or something. The only time I felt like I was getting the 'more' I want from a novel that is dealing with weighty topics such as this was towards the end when the Abbott got enmeshed the fight about euthanasia for victims of radiation poisoning. Unfortunately, this section came in the last thirty pages of the book, and wasn't typical of the arguments being played out through the rest of the book. My other problem with the book (did I actually mention a problem yet?), is that I don't find the book funny. I was promised funny on the book jacket, and one of the two top reviewers on goodreads seems to find the book humorous (or parts of it). I found some parts to be slightly amusing, but I never would have found any part to be actually humorous, the humor when it does occur was more of the slap-stick antic style of funny than, well, something that I would normally call funny. If I had to describe the humor of this book I'd say it's like the 'unfunny' sibling of Vonnegut. Now I'm thinking about the humor question a bit more and I can see why someone would call it a funny book but for me it just didn't do much. Blame Vonnegut for ruining the sort of funny this book has for me.
Where do I start? A Canticle for Liebowitz, first published in 1960, is one of the greatest English-languge novels. I first read it the year after it was introduced to the public, when I was 16, and it drove home an understanding of just what global nuclear war was likely to do to the world. Somber, heart-wrernching, the novel is nevertheless written with wry, sardonic humor that counterbalances the horror of what has happened to the world . . . until it dawns on the reader that what is sardonically humorous are the human attitudes that got the world into that state in the first place. This is not a book for light reading or mild entertainment -- but it is one that every thoughtful adult ought to read, lest we fall into the trap of suffering the repeat of a history we tried to ignore . . . or creating a future even more hideous than some of history's blackest periods.A Canticle for Leibowitz, a post-apocalyptic science fiction novel by American Walter M. Miller, Jr., is based on three short stories which Miller contributed to The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction; it is the only novel published by the author before his death from a self-inflicted gunshot wound in 1996. Considered one of the great classics of science fiction, according it has never been out of print, and has seen over 25 reprints and editions (or so according to Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Cantic.... I tried looking for it on amazon.com this evening and came up empty; only amazon.ca had it; it may not be currently in print). Appealing to mainstream and genre critics and readers alike, it won the 1961 Hugo Award for best science fiction novel.Inspired by the author's participation in the Allied bombing of the monastery at Monte Cassino during World War II, the novel is considered a masterpiece by literary critics. It has been compared favorably with the works of Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene, and Walker Percy, and its themes of religion, recurrence, and church versus state have generated a significant body of scholarly research.The novel is, with rare, short exceptions, set in a Roman Catholic monastery in the desert of the Southwestern United States after a devastating nuclear war. The story spans nearly two millennia, beginning with the Flame Wars, or 20th century global nuclear holocaust, and covers the slow, torturous rebuilding of civilization through the devoted work of the monks, nomad raids, police actions by civil authority, and all the rest of what constitutes the history of any civilization. The monks of the Albertian Order of Leibowitz take up the mission of preserving the surviving remnants of man's scientific knowledge until the day the outside world is again ready for it -- but is man ever ready for that?One of the things that has deeply moved me every time I've read and reread A Canticle for Liebowitz over the years is the devotion, courage, and grace of the Albertian monks as they strive over the centuries to preserve what is left of the scientific and other texts of a suicidal civilization from the fires of raging mobs of simpletons, i.e., ordinary citizens, whose hate for "those smug bastards who did this" has led them to root and burn not only texts, but those who wrote and taught them, not to mention any monks who, like Isaac Liebowitz, founder of the order himself, have been unfortunate enough to be caught with such texts on their persons or in their near vicinity. Since the end of the 20th century, all the way to the 32nd century and the beginning of the recovery of late 20th-century technology, the monks live all their days doing everything possible to protect the books and documents that preserve that technology, so that their contemporaries can begin the work of rebuilding an advanced global civilization. But even as technological progress once more begins to unfold with lightning speed, it becomes evident that the human soul hasn't changed at all, and that history is very likely to repeat itself. Which it finally does -- humanity doesn't want the moral maturity of the monks, only the toys the plans for which have been preserved so lovingly by the monks, and once again the world is wrapped in radioactive fire, possibly for the very last time.The novel begins with Part I, "Fiat Homo (Let There Be Man)." Set in the 26th century, Part I describes the time taking place after the Age of Simplification, a time of popular revolt against scientists inspired by the nuclear Flame Wars. Part II, "Fiat Lux (Let There Be Light)," takes place in the 32nd century, when humanity rediscovers the light bulb and the use of electricity to turn motors. But to his horror, the monastery's abbot discovers that once again, science and true wisdom are beginning to diverge in ways that promise to be radical, and that science and, with it, engineering will always be the preferred studies of the rulers of men, while wisdom is sent to weep in the corners of the world, watch as disaster comes ever closer, and be powerless to do anything to stop it. In Part III, "Fiat Voluntas Tua (Let Thy Will Be Done), set in the 38th century, the vast, technologically advanced civilization built on the ashes of the 20th century is destroyed . . . by another global thermonuclear war. This time, it may be that all that is left of Earth's life is what has been transplanted to various interstellar colonies before the nuclear balloon went up, though, at least, it is noted at the end of the novel, a shark survives, but only by moving to particularly deep water to avoid the fallout, and thereafter he experiences a time of great hunger. The Order of Liebowitz, however, survives -- offworld, on one of Earth's struggling interstellar colonies, along with a great number of orphans that those monks assigned to crew the ship and settle the monastery in at the new colony have taken with them.Life's long history is one of endlessly repeated tragedies. Miller's great testament was an attempt to get the world to pull back from carrying out the worst tragedy of all: the end of civilization and with it, possibly, humanity as a species and even Earthly life itself. At least so far, we have managed to avoid that fate. If God is kind, Miller is smiling at that in the heaven reserved for those who do all they can to prevent murder on the largest possible scale.
What do You think about A Canticle For Leibowitz (2006)?
Written in 1959 during the cold war and the fear of nuclear war, this book has stood the test of time remarkably well. Set over three time periods, it describes society a few hundred years after world-wide nuclear annihilation or the 'Flame Deluge" as it's remembered, when mankind is starting to recover. The backlash to nuclear war has been the 'Simplification' where all books are burnt and educated people killed to prevent to prevent any re-invention of the weapons that destroyed the world. A Jewish electronic engineer, Isaac Leibowitz who survived established a monastery in the Utah desert and charged the monks with collecting as much written material as they can and keeping it safe in a fortified monastery. In the second time period, some six centuries later man is emerging from the dark ages, science is being re-invented and the 'memorabilia' kept by the monks is rediscovered and inspected for the knowledge it contains. In the final time period another 600 years later, man has travelled to the stars and formed new colonies but has reinvented weapons and Earth is once again on the brink of destruction.There is much humour in the story - in the many characters with all their human imperfections as well as in the worship of ancient writings (like Leibowitz's shopping list and circuit diagram), but there are also many serious issues for consideration just as pertinent to today as to the middle of last century. There is the ever topical battle between science and religion as well as the question of whether euthanasia should be allowed for people doomed to die. The biggest question of course, is whether as a civilization are we doomed to keep fighting and killing each other over religion, race or land with ever more powerful weapons or will be at some stage grow up and evolve beyond that?
—Carolyn
TEN stars. A book that would NEVER EVER make it through to a small-time SF magazine let alone a major publisher today, far too Catholic (and unapologetically so) and one of the greatest books I've ever read. I think it's fortunate that I waited until my middle age to read this as I'd likely not have had the depth of understanding to fully appreciate all the layers of this. Unfortunately it's the kind of book that also makes me question why I even try to write at all, it's shown me again that the art has already been mastered and to "abandon hope all ye who enter here"... ! A sampling: “The closer men came to perfecting for themselves a paradise, the more impatient they became with it, and with themselves as well. They made a garden of pleasure, and became progressively more miserable with it as it grew in richness and power and beauty; for then, perhaps, it was easier to see something was missing in the garden, some tree or shrub that would not grow. When the world was in darkness and wretchedness, it could believe in perfection and yearn for it. But when the world became bright with reason and riches, it began to sense the narrowness of the needle's eye, and that rankled for a world no longer willing to believe or yearn.”
—Christopher
Yeah, its preachy. Yeah, most of the plot happens off the page. Yeah, its light on action and heavy on a secular vs. religious debate. But it has a two-headed woman and an immortal Jew, medieval warfare AND rocket ships. Dude. Also, I liked the structure. Supposedly the three sections were different novellas that Miller linked together to form this novel, which gives it a stop-and-go sensation that he uses to good effect in spanning over a thousand years of story, dropping and picking up characters who have tenuous connection to each other and still keeping you interested. Also, the focus on individual relationships (read: theological and moral debates) rather than the geopolitical intrigue happening in the background was an interesting move that I liked. It felt personal and epic, contemplative and bombastic.
—Dustin
